Chicken in a kilt

Ok so in November I participated in a swap put on by LouiseJHunt of the Caithness Craft Collective podcast. This particular swap was for a handwritten letter and a handmade Christmas decoration.

I was paired up with my new friend Arlen, a Scot transplanted into Boise, Idaho. I didn't have much information to go on for what to make him, but I knew he was originally from Scotland and that he had a number of chickens. So obviously...

Because chickens wear kilts, right? Well, even with a quick Google search, I didn't find chickens wearing kilts, but really they should because, especially for hens, it would be good for them if they have a randy rooster that has his favourite girls who lose their back feathers with all the attention. Chicken sweaters are a thing, why not chicken kilts?

Oh hi

Hey friends and readers. Yes, I'm still around the Cowichan Valley, still volunteering at Providence Farm, and still doing some reno work. I have been so busy I hardly have time to do laundry, much less blog. But I *do* miss you and miss writing! So fear not, I haven't forgotten you.

Immigration status: it's been almost a month since I applied for my document from Japan. That's the only holdup now. I received the one from Korea last week. We aren't clear about if I just need the long form of my birth certificate (which I have) or the Registration of Birth (with signatures of my parents back in 1974), so to be on the safe side I'm sending off for the latter today. I also forgot about the photo, so I'll see what the requirements are, take a photo of myself, send the photo to Dan who will muck around with it in Photoshop, and he will send the file back to me in ready-to-print format.

Homestead status: At the moment there is one adult rooster, three laying hens, five teenagers (three hens and two soon-to-be-frozen roosters), and three little ones. I have lost track of how old the youngest ones are - there were five but two disappeared a few weeks ago, one on the same day I found a juvenile sharp-shinned hawk in the chicken run. The three 'teenage' hens should start laying in September, which will bring up the daily egg production from two or three to five to six. So that will be good. The garden is raging out of control and I honestly haven't been home/had time to help with weed control or harvesting. We are eating fresh fruits and vegetables out of it every day, and last week Toni and I put up a bunch of zucchini. We found a U-pick cherry orchard just down the road ($1.50/pound!) and gathered 45 pounds of cherries on two visits, then later made preserves and jam. I spent two and a half hours on Friday night pitting cherries.

Knitting status: Alas! I have had very little time to knit these days. I finished the duck, which I blogged about, but haven't really had time to do much of anything. I am (I think) a few hours away from finishing the cardigan I started in the spring. I picked up my Brother Amos Hellfire Lace socks again, started back in 2010 but got frustrated with the more-intricate-than-necessary construction and have been inching away at them. I did start another Runner Duck cosy, so that will probably get most of my attention for a while. I am also working on a simple shawl with yarn donated to the farm, as my mindless knitting (I let myself work on it for a few hours on Sunday, desperate to knit something).

Emotional status: as of Saturday, I think, it will be three months since my last depressive episode. I am actually doing very well, and being busy has a lot to do with it. I think the other thing is doing work that I really enjoy. Toni and I have been talking about my work experiences, and the jobs that have given me the most satisfaction are the ones that: have physical activity; have tangible results; keep me busy/use my brain; and involves working with people I like. I think that is really telling. In most of those cases, those jobs haven't paid very well but that hasn't seemed to have made an impact. In fact, years ago I left a job making $12/hour for one that paid $8/hour, and I was WAY happier at the cheaper job. On another note, I miss Dan a lot, as it has now been six months since I have seen him last, but we are increasing our efforts to have actual phone conversations twice a week instead of one, and we communicate by text message every day. We know we are near the end, and whether he is able to make it out for a visit or we just sit tight until it's time for me to leave, we are managing okay.

Weight status: I might as well tell you that I have gained back some of the weight I lost last year. I lost something like 30 pounds in the first half of 2011, and in January (or so) of this year it started creeping back. I blame the bread. Well never mind what is to blame, it's coming off again. I'm working really hard at this physical job of renovation, so I'm feeling my muscles all day long when I'm there. It's *great*. I'm also not beating myself up about it, because I know that I will take the weight off again.

Geographic location status: I will be moving back to Victoria at the beginning of September, and I'll be scaling my volunteer time at the Farm from three days down to one. It's more of a transition time, really, which I think (I hope!) will be good for everyone. Toni and the Skipper will have their basement back and they can once again host house guests. They can also sleep downstairs when it's really stinking hot outside and the basement is a haven, as I have joyfully discovered this summer. :-) Sam and I will be in a different room in my in-laws' house, as the step-bro-in-law has now moved to Montreal for grad school, so we won't be so cramped and there will be room for Sam's two new scratching posts. I'll have time to repack all my stuff before the trip. I won't have to drive into Victoria for an hour each way to work at the renovation job. I'll help with cooking and other things around the house. My truck will be available for the family to use. It will be an easy taking-off point for when I need to go to Vancouver for my immigration medical check and to Montreal for my visa interview.

I feel like it could be soon. I've been disappointed time and again by my wishful thinking, but this really does feel like a time of transition. I have done so much inner processing and personal work in the last year that in some ways, I feel like a new person and have quite a different outlook on life. Toni says she has seen some major transformations in me, and I think that that is not only encouraging, but a testament to how her care, mentoring, influence and presence has been immensely healing for me. (O great I'm going to start crying) No really, Toni is an amazing person and I am incredibly grateful for having this opportunity to attend the UofT (University of Toni) this year. I'm near graduation though, and it's time for me to start the next phase of my life.

Whew! I didn't mean to write such a long post. I was actually just going to drop in and say hi! I'll be back soon! And then I got rolling. O well. I hope you are all well!

a handmade wedding

Yesterday I went to a wedding with Toni and the Skipper. I had met the bride once before and the groom not at all, but at that one meeting the bride said "If you're still here on July 28th then please come to my wedding!" So I did.

It was lovely. My wedding was a handmade wedding so I could appreciate all the thought and preparation that went into this one. The couple lives on a 20 acre farm near Nanaimo and grow fruits, vegetables, chickens and ducks. (WHY didn't I take any pictures of the chickens and ducks? *kicks self*) It's a lovely farm and you can tell right away that a lot of work goes into its maintenance.

There were about 50 people there (I didn't count). We parked in a field, put our potluck offerings in the recently completed barn, and poked around the farm until we were summoned to the tent where the ceremony was to be held. The officiant was a relative of the groom but had legal authority, and it was a lovely ceremony. The bride had made her own outfit and the groom in his Scots attire.

The ceremony referred to passages and stories of the Bible without being too churchy. The bride and groom had written their own vows, which were each put in frames from which they read to each other. The groom's vows were very moving, the brides were decidedly earthy. Yup. The whole darn thing made me cry - not just from all the love present but for missing My Sweety. We got married almost four years ago and I know well that moment of marrying your best friend.

I will admit that I did fall into a bit of sadness after that, so when the ceremony was over I wandered around the property by myself, found the washroom (in the farm house), leered at the bride's three spinning wheels, snooped in the knitting basket, admired the strings of hanging herbs, counted five guitars, pet the sleeping cat, then headed back outside to say hello to the ducks and chickens before making my way to the WINE. After a bit of food, I suddenly felt human again (food is amazing for that, what with having calories and all) and able to socialize. I tried to convey my story (I have been apart from my husband for 14 months, haven't seen him for nearly six months) without seeking pity. People were delighted to hear that I have been volunteering at Providence Farm. I showed photos of my recently completed Indian Runner duck Bodum cosy (for a later blog post).

The dessert table will win me every time. The cheesecake was amazing. The carrot cake was good. Lots of cookies and squares and other sweet things. The wedding cake was a fruit cake, made and decorated by the bride.

Other items of interest: there was maple sap wine! (I'm sorry, the secret is out). Did you know you could make wine from maple sap? They also had blackberry wine as well as a number of other wines. The wedding favors were little jars of homemade jam and a bar of handmade soap. It was a lovely wedding and picnic, and it served as a good reminder to me of just how much I love parties. I'm not the most outgoing of people in a crowd of strangers, but you just never know what kinds of interesting conversations you might get into. I had a good time.

update on the rest of my life

In other news, I am now volunteering at Providence Farm three days a week. I help with seniors on Tuesdays, I'm in the greenhouse on Thursdays, and as of last week I am in the Loom Room on Fridays. O my word I must take a picture of the Loom Room, there are at least a dozen looms between table and floor looms. There are spinning wheels and sewing machines and patterns and books and yarn and more yarn and ribbons and buttons and a crafter's paradise! I learned how to weave on a floor loom last Friday and I was absolutely enchanted. Now I want one. Dan promised to build me one.

I love Providence Farm. I wrote about my experiences early on but each time I go my feeling of love for and from the place deepens. I am learning so much about myself and others. I am learning even more patience (who knew that was even possible?), I am learning how volunteers and caregivers dance around people with dementia, I am learning about plants (I discovered Korean Mint!), and that weaving is way faster than knitting. I spend my days around all kinds of people and the love just flows, it is so wonderful. I really hope there are other places like this in the world.

On this note, I wanted to share with you an experience I had there two weeks ago. There is a man who comes every few weeks with leftover bread from a local bakery, given free to St. Ann's Garden Centre (the program I volunteer for on Tuesdays). He is good friends with one of the older volunteers, and that particular day he had some friends with him, members of their church. They sat off at the far end of the room while I was in the kitchen extracting muffins from tins. The man led them through a prayer for one of their fellow congregates who, it sounded like, had recently been the victim of some legal injustice. I didn't hear the whole story, but I felt absolutely compelled to stop what I was doing with the muffins and join them in their prayer. It wasn't the words, because I couldn't really hear them, but the powerful feeling of love I felt coming from 40 feet away. I was filled with awe. I don't know how else to describe it. I was absolutely moved.

There was a time when I would have been irritated by someone praying in my presence. Irritated that they would bring their stupid Bible crap within my earshot. Nothing inspires ire in me more than JW's coming to the door and ambushing you with their cookie-cutter arguments for whatever objections you might have. I abhorred any kind of righteousness and assumed that all those of the Christian persuasion were out to convert the rest of us.

So, some of you know that I identified as Wiccan for ten years. I had no formal religious affiliation before that, though I was baptized Catholic (ha!) and I had been loosely studying Buddhism before I discovered Wicca and Paganism. When I walked away from Wicca, I walked away from religion entirely because, as a scientist (I have a piece of paper that declares me so), I did not believe in a god so religion just made no sense to me. That was in 2009. In the time since then I have had all kinds of realizations and reflections about where I'm at with my spirituality and religion. I stopped any practices or rituals I had previously done and I didn't miss it. I guess it was a time of secular reflection for me while my life was busy with other things.

I know I have mentioned here before, perhaps only in passing, about my experiences in the last six month with a friend who has recently blossomed into her psychic medium skills, about my introduction to A Course in Miracles, about my experiencing meditation as an actual discipline. I have had all kinds of interesting thoughts and conversations about this new-to-me material I have been engaging with and have been processing a lot of emotional baggage. My views about many things have changed, I have become way more forgiving and more patient (though I am not immune to emotional flare-ups from time to time!). I communicate with my cat telepathically and she responds. I visit the chickens when I'm sad and they heal me. I have experienced so many major shifts within in these last six months that even Toni is surprised at how much I have changed, and we spent a LOT of time together! So when I witnessed that prayer for a stranger two weeks ago, I knew that I had arrived at a new level with my spirituality.

I had dinner with some friends in Victoria last week. One of the friends asked me where I was at with my spirituality and religion, as she knew about my walking away from faith a few years ago. In all this transformation I have been going through these past months, I haven't really taken the time to articulate it, at least not in public. I journal about it all the time. Here is what I told her: "I went from having spent most of my life not believing in a God to having a nightly conversation with Him".

 
Just let that settle in for a minute.


So what does that mean? No, I'm not a Born Again anything. I'm not suddenly going to accept or take on a religion because I have (to use a cliche) found God. In fact I was (naturally) loathe to tell anyone about it because I don't want people to think I'm a new age freak. Instead, I will attempt to articulate this further (and I haven't even journaled about this yet, you are getting raw and uncut Stacey!): I think I had better start with my assumptions so you know where I am going.

I believe in reincarnation.
I believe in spirit guides, that we can communicate with our beloved dead, and we can communicate telepathically.
As of recently, I believe in angels.
I accept the teachings of A Course in Miracles which says that time and space are not real things, that what we are perceiving as our experience is not in fact real (I don't feel qualified to expand on that point to do it justice, at least not yet). The Course also teaches that there is only fear and love, and that fear is the absence of love, so when you are experiencing fear what you really need is love. (There are many good teachers who simplify the labyrinthine material of the Course, should you care to dabble).
I even believe in Jesus.
And now, I also believe in God.

So to fill in that frame a bit, if love is what we strive for, then every thing we do must be in pursuit of love. Love of self, love of others, love of all. In this view, we are all One, not separate, and that you are a reflection of a part of me that I need to engage with right now. I realize I am getting metaphysical here, but honestly this is where my mind has been in these last months. It has been amazing to turn a number of experiences in my life that I had formerly perceived as negative and see them now as gifts or opportunities for growth. If I believe that I have chosen this life for myself (and I do believe that), then I can blame no one for my suffering, and that I chose to experience suffering in order to learn... what? Well, each experience has something different to teach us. Just like we'll keep dating the same type of jerk until we learn to respect ourselves, at which point the Right Man will come along (it happened to me!)(Gosh I hope none of my ex-'s are reading this). I digress.

This is how I was able to go from "O no! I will be terribly inconvenienced by having to go to Montreal for my visa appointment" to "I have always wanted to go to Montreal and this will be a great opportunity! Maybe I will have some interesting experiences while I'm there!" In a way, it's re-framing or re-perceiving my experience in a positive way that has gotten me through this year of being without my husband. There have clearly been a bundle of things I needed to learn in this time that we've been apart that I probably would not have had the chance to if we were together.

WHEW. That was a lot to get out, a lot to tell you, dear reader, but I figured it was time I came out of the (what do you call it when you out yourself spiritually?) cave? (Ha - I accidentally typed 'cafe' instead of 'cave', which also makes an interesting metaphor ;-)) This is how I view my world now.

Oh! I just remembered the other big thing that has been occupying my brain for the last couple of weeks but it's getting late and I want to wrap up this blog post. Toni and I have been talking a lot about climate change, peak oil, permaculture, and the collapse of oil-based society as we know it. I have had my mind clamped on developing post-apocalyptic survival skills. I'm not going to get into it here but it sure has had me thinking lately. I embrace learning new skills and I am now really motivated to learn how to make a fire without matches or a lighter. I'll probably have a few posts about this, possibly several on the weekend (I'll have the house to myself!), so maybe we can start some interesting conversations about disaster preparedness.

One last thing: I will direct you to Toni's most recent post for an update about what's been happening around here. As of today Hen has hatched out five more chicks with a few more eggs to go. The flock is changing and CHICKS ARE SO CUTE OMG.

Three things I need to do

My dear readers. I have seriously not had the inclination to write lately, despite having tons of content that I would love to share with you.

My sister has come and gone, and it was a good visit but man does she ever talk A LOT. We were up three nights in a row well past midnight, two of those nights were later than 2am, and we were talking. It took me a few days to recover from her visit.

On Saturday I volunteered for an event at Providence Farm where I wore a chef's coat and made pizza for the wood-fired oven. It was tons of fun and the beginning of my time as a volunteer there.

Last night Toni and the Skipper reduced their chicken flock by one, the bird who was the main rooster. It was hard on all of us, since he was such a good main roo, but when you have two roosters, there will be fighting for the top spot. The remaining roo, Percy, is lovers with Hen, who is currently momma to 16-day old chicks, and we couldn't separate them. Toni is planning to blog about the processing so I won't go into it (not sure my readership wants to know anyway) but it was an emotional thing. It is a powerful thing to literally come face to face with your food. I think it is something everyone should experience, to know that food comes from a place and that place is not just the grocery store.

At any rate, no, we still have not heard anything about my immigration. Apparently through your local congressman there is such a thing as Help with a Federal Agency where you basically register a complaint with a process that is not being handled well. I would say we have a valid complaint. I have written my letter and sent it to Dan, and as he is the one with the supporting documents and file number, he will be submitting this. Fingers crossed this works.

Meanwhile, believing that 'fortune favors the prepared', I have decided that not everything is out of my control: I can do everything in my power to be ready for when the time comes. The first thing I had to do was find my passport. I had actually imposed a lot of stress on myself (why?) about not knowing where it was. And instead of finding a remedy for this stress (i.e. looking for my passport), I continued to berate myself for not knowing where it was. Isn't that silly? So today I finally did it. I looked for my passport. Guess what? It took about five minutes. WHEW. And it's two years away from expiring.

The second thing I want to do is finish knitting the Dan & Stacey Reunion Socks. This is two pairs of socks with the same pattern but different yarn, both shades of green, so that next year when we celebrate St. Patrick's Day together (that's the day we met, 2013 will be six years for us), we'll have green socks to wear. But they will be reunion socks because they will be DONE by the time we are together again. I have set them down, sort of, since I am now working on a cardigan as a knit along with Toni, who has recently picked up her needles again after a long hiatus. The cardi is going swimmingly, and I think I'm far enough ahead of Toni that I can take a break from that and get back to the socks for a while. This is, in effect, a form of sympathetic magic - that is to declare and get these socks done will assure that I will be reunited with My Sweety soon. So I'll be working hard on these.

The third and final thing is that I want to repack and put all the stuff in storage that I'm not using right now. I don't need my winter gear (yay) and there are some books I have finished reading and I certainly don't need ALL my yarn (that will be the subject of another post - I have come into an abundance of yarn recently). So if I am mostly packed and ready, then when the green card comes, I will not have to waste any time in packing.

check one off my bucket list

Adventures of my hair continue.

Today I had a bath, then decided it was time to give my hair a trim. I wasn't especially fond of the shade of auburn it was turning out to be and was thinking about how long it will be before it grew out long enough for me to cut it off leaving my natural colour. I got out the scissors. Snip, snip. It's not easy cutting your own hair when it's really short, especially the back, so I got the clippers out. Just to do the back. Not being in any way adept with these things, I wasn't able to make a smooth transition from the shaved back of my head to the two inch strands on the top. I could have waited and asked the Toni or the Skipper for help with tidying it up but... I thought no, I'll just keep going.

And so I did it. I have always wanted to have a shaved head, and not necessarily completely bald. but this will certainly do. 

The camera only catches a few of the whites, but there are a lot more than is shown here. And there are a lot more than there was before I started dyeing my hair blond in 2010. So I come to face the reality of my hair, the ebbing of my vanity, and, surprisingly, the freedom that is really short hair! My first thought when I looked at myself was: I look like Pema Chodron! Which, considering she's an awesome Buddhist and all, is not such a bad thing.

See, changes are afoot in my head, and I'm reading and studying and learning so much right now it's hard to gather it all into a group of words and organize them into a blog post. I have started meditating. In fact, I started an eight-week meditation course presented by Sounds True (it's free!) last week and have been meditating every day. I am also beginning a new yoga practice. I have long been a fan of yoga and was once quite adept, but have been shocked lately to see how inflexible I have become. I must get my body back to that supple and limber state.

I have had to face the music with something else as well: I have gained some of my weight back. I stepped on the scale again and felt only a little discouraged but have new resolve. We have been having an awful lot of fun with food here at Backyard Feast, and I think we have all three of us gained weight since I've been here. (Sorry!) I think I had better slow down on the bread making. I want to have more and bigger salads. I'm not employed and while I have some 'duties' (tending the chickens when my friends aren't home), my schedule is my own so I need to organize and manage my time better, especially now that I have new things in my routine like meditation, yoga, and reading (I have been reading a lot of books from the library lately). This is all to say more changes are in the cards for me and while I have been sorely neglecting my readers, it's really for my own good. I have lots to tell you, all in good time.

O Hey

There I go again, neglecting my readers. Sorry friends.

I had a fantastic weekend chicken-sitting in Cowichan Bay last weekend. Sam and I drove up on Thursday and we stayed four nights.  The photos below don't really reflect what I did over the weekend, but hey, it's all I have to show for it.

Soon this place will be home to a wood stove. I can't wait. 

Mittens for my niece! She asked me for yellow mittens before I left Alberta. I didn't have enough yellow yarn, so I had to use white as well, which made them look a bit like scrambled eggs. O well. I have discovered that an afterthought thumb is my favourite.

 Sam slept on every surface in the house, I think.

 Cherry brandy! Earlier this year I was reading one of Diana Gabaldon's books and Claire was visiting an apothecary in Paris, drinking cherry brandy. So I needed some too.

 On Saturday morning I went into Duncan (the closest town, 10 minutes drive away). I don't know what happened to my old travel mug but I have been without one for - well, I don't even know. Five months? I don't really go into stores very often, not wanting to be tempted, but I thought I'd pop into London Drugs to look around. They had a not great selection of travel mugs but I did like this one. I'm thinking about something that will fit into the cup holder in my truck (I really think the people who design travel mugs should get together with the people who design cup holders in vehicles), something that is dishwasher safe, and something that will match with the car we might own in two years. Brown is a popular colour for newer vehicles and I really dig it. But I didn't buy this mug. It was 26.99.

 I had to buy lottery tickets. That's what one does when one needs hope, right?

 Action shot of Sam. Here she is rolling around on the floor. That's how I know she was happy!

 Aw. Sam is cleaning her cute kitty face. So cute.

 This! Ok so Toni had grown way more tomatoes than they could possibly use, and for about six weeks, they had tens of pounds of tomatoes ripening in crates in their dining room. These tomatoes really needed to be used up, so I cut up as many would fit onto a baking pan. Added a few rather large cloves of garlic, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with rock salt. Put it into the oven. That was as far as I had gotten in my plan, but it was going to be a component of the dinner I would make for my friends when they got home from Vancouver.

I can't remember what temperature I put them at, but boy they sure smelled good. I decided they would either go into a pasta or perhaps on a pizza, would let my friends decide. The vote was for pizza, so I threw together a crust.

Toni helped out by spreading pesto on the crust. Then on went the tomatoes & garlic mixture, we threw on some chopped artichoke hearts, Kalamata olives, feta and some amazing cheddar. Oven was set to 400 degrees, we had it in for about 25-30 minutes.

I didn't use a recipe for the crust, just sort of threw it together. During the pizza assembly we were drinking beer too :-) so the 'throwing together' was a bit more literal than figurative. It turned out well though and between the three of us, there were almost no leftovers.

What else did I do? I watched Brokeback Mountain. Have you seen it? I had heard a reference in the news to the 'gay' penguins in the Toronto Zoo (who are probably not homosexual but are just very good friends, ah how we humans have to anthropomorphize everything) to the movie and decided it was time I saw it. Holy crap. I won't drop any spoilers here but gosh that movie had me thinking about it for days and days. I even tried to overwrite my memory with a few Miss Marple episodes (so much knitting while sleuthing for the murderer!). I'm not a fan of murder mysteries, but a few months ago on Twitter during a #knitchat, we had a discussion about knitting in movies and television, someone mentioned the Miss Marple series. Hey - it's BBC and has knitting in it, so it has to be good. And it is! The stories are all expertly woven together a la Agatha Christie. What I love, though, is the setting. All the stories are set in post WWII England in the late 1940s to early 50s. I love that era, especially the fashion of the times. That alone is reason enough for me to watch the series. Nuff. said.

I also went running a few times. It was so nice running around on country roads where cars aren't going highway speed and there isn't actually much traffic to speak of. I found some lovely enclaves, long straight flat stretches, and some beautiful scenery. The weather cooperated while I was there also.

I didn't take any photos of the chickens this time around, but I did hang out with them. The first night I was in charge, it was super stormy and blustery. The row coverings for the raised beds threatened to blow away. I worried about the chickens, but they seemed not to notice the storm. They were just excited when I came out to give them their treats (involving sunflower seeds). Chickens. The Skipper had built an automatic door opener to the chicken coop that is set on a timer, so that all I had to do was open and close the door to the outdoor pen. Happy chickens!

I also went into a feed store on Saturday, while I was in Duncan. The vet Sam saw in Alberta for her pre-border-crossing checkup & vaccinations gave us a free sample of dental formula crunchy food. Sam loved it so I promised her when it next came time to buy food, she would get that brand. It's amazing how much she likes it. And I don't know if it is having some variety, something different, or if it's just the 'new' bag of food. No matter. She likes it and that's all that matters.

I did a fair amount of knitting on the weekend too. Finished the mittens for my niece, started another pair for some other family member who doesn't read my blog, and also cast on for the Mezquita shawl. Three hundred and sixty one stitches. 361. Do you have any idea how long that takes? Because first you cast on, and you're counting, and maybe you're also watching Miss Marple so you lose count once or twice, but casting on takes a l o n g time. And then you recount your stitches like five times, getting a different number every time. Then you decide you need stitch markers but didn't bring any, so root around the kitchen for twist ties and voila! I put a twist tie every 50 stitches, counted them twice to be sure, and ended up with 362. Off by one. Easy to fix. I have since learned that one episode of Miss Marple, about 100 minutes, sees me knitting exactly two rows of this shawl. I'm not a fast knitter, but I'm certainly not a slow knitter. It's just lace and counting and thinking and going back and fixing. I'm 10 rows in now, have 10 more rows of the lace section before I get to the short row stockinette section. I haven't taken a photo of this yet or I'd show you. Maybe tomorrow.

I try as best I can to be cheerful and optimistic about my situation, but sometimes it's hard. The immigration lawyer Dan hired filed the application on Friday, having sent it registered mail. Immigration processed the cheque on Monday already, so that was very encouraging. When Dan filed the first time in the summer, they never even processed the cheque, so this seemed like a big thing. Apparently this is a slow time of year for applications for green cards, meaning I should get processed fairly quickly. Fingers crossed. Then yesterday I had an avalanche of sadness. This seems to be happening on a weekly basis at the moment, where I'll just feel like I'm scraping bottom. I'm oversensitive to everything at the moment, it seems, particularly my cat.

Sam fully recovered from the fight on Halloween, but on Saturday night she started oozing some pus out of her right eye. I called the vet hospital on Monday, the same one she got her sutures from, to see if the two might be related and she said no. She said it's probably not much to worry about unless it was accompanied by loss of appetite and lethargy. Well, her appetite is just fine. And lethargy? It's hard to tell. She doesn't have a lot of space to roam so she's probably too bored to do anything but sleep. I don't know.

Then, two days ago, she stopped being lovey with me. She's not an especially lovey cat but still. I haven't heard her purr since Monday night. She's all I have right now, you see, my dear cat that I brought home with me from Korea in 2003, this cat who has been by my side through all my depressive episodes and a few of my surgeries. I need her to love me. That's her job as my cat. Her eye goo is lessening and she is otherwise acting perfectly normal. I just want to hear her purr.

Yesterday this lack of affection hit me really hard and I just crumbled. Had an anxiety attack, actually, which is something I've not experienced in quite a long time. And you know, it's not just because of the cat, it's a combination of everything. I am bothered by this not so much because of the sadness but by how much it inconveniences me. Crying like that takes a lot out of a person so you're left exhausted. And I have things to do! I may not be working full time but I do have this little project I need to get finished. And the sooner I get finished, the sooner I can get to my knitting, non stop, in front of Miss Marple and underneath the electric blanket, tea to hand. Sam will be fine, she's just having a mood (just like I do). I will be fine too.

Chicken Chicken Chickens

I love chickens. When we were living in East Sooke, our landlords had chickens. Five hens and a rooster by the time we left, but it always changed. Sometimes the racoons got in, sometimes there were two roosters, chickens came and go.

If you have never had the pleasure of just hanging out with some happy chickens that aren't confined to a cage or the inside of a barn, you owe yourself a favour. There are so many breeds of chickens and some of them are quite beautiful. Not only that, they are quite personable and will love you if they think you have food. My mother in law is fond of chickens, and there are many paintings and sculptures around the house that feature chickens. I remember seeing a chicken calendar in the condo in Missoula. I can see why they hold such fascination!

I spent the weekend in Cowichan Bay with Toni and the Skipper. They have several different breeds and I never did get a full bird count but I think it is eight hens and three roosters. They all have names and personalities and were just a delight to watch in the back yard. I was finally able to take some photos and I'm just going to plaster them all below, unceremoniously. Note the gorgeous rust coloured feathers on the roosters. Here you go!